A review of research progress and projection of future publication trend amongst the science stream academics of University of Jaffna, Sri Lanka

Abstract

An increase in emphasis on research productivity evaluation can be discerned commonly in higher educational institutions world over. As far as the Faculty of Science, University of Jaffna is concerned such an in depth study had not been done. This bibliometric study analyzed the research publications produced by the academics of Faculty of Science, University of Jaffna. The objective of this study is to empirically measure the research output during the time period of 2003 to 2018 to find out the department wise output, year wise publication output, authorship pattern and degree of collaboration, media of research communication, relative growth rate, doubling time and to forecast future publication trend of academics. The year wise publication output shows an increasing pattern. But the output growth is not uniform. Findings revealed that Faculty of Science has produced 1359 publications with an annual average of 85 and with the maximum of 139 during the study period. The highest number of publications is from the Department of Zoology (22%). The Department of Botany shows second highest number with 21% of the publications. The lowest number is from the Department of Fisheries (4%). The research output from departments of Physics, Mathematics and Statistics, and Chemistry are more or less the same. Mean value of the degree of collaboration of authors during the overall sixteen years is found to be 0.84. Single author publications are less (15%) than collaborative effort (85%). Abstract form of publications is more in number 836 (61%). Journal article is 501 (37%) and Book form is 22 (2%). A uniform dropping pattern was observed in the mean relative growth rate (RGR) from 0.439 to 0.122 considering four year blocks from 2003 to 2018. The mean doubling time showed an increasing tendency through each consecutive block of four year period. It ranged from 0.89 in the first block to 5.80 in the last block of a total of sixteen year time span. The forecast for 2025 based on least square estimate the number of publications should be 186 if status remains unchanged. Thus Faculty of Science has to endeavor and orient their research efforts more towards publishing journal articles than short communications and giving priority towards interdisciplinary research to obtain greater impacts with the vision of establishing excellence of the institution.